Last Chance
by redhead evans
Summary: If looks could kill…. But Ron, for once, was right. This was her last chance. Hermione goes to Minerva and tells the older woman how she feels. MM/Hr
1. Leap of Faith

"Congratulations, and goodnight," Headmistress Minerva Mc Gonagall called out to the Gryffindor Common Room, which was politely waiting for her to leave so that the gradation party could begin in earnest, with plenty of firewhiskey brought from Hogsmeade to help it along to it's most rowdy. With a sigh that said that they weren't fooling her, Minerva gave a curt nod and then turned to leave the room. It was the same every year, but truth be told they were no longer her students and this class more than ever needed a chance to celebrate.

Taking the opportunity that presented itself while their former Transfiguration Professor's back was turned, Ron Weasley turned to his best friend, Hermione Granger, seated next to him on the couch, and gave her a pointed look. Studiously, she ignored it, but the professor was nearing the portrait hole and he wouldn't be put off. Deciding that his not-so-subtle look wasn't obvious enough, he chose instead to elbow her in the ribs. Hard.

"Ow!" she hissed, turning to face him at last, if only to fix him with a baleful glare. "What, Ronald?" Every single nuance of the tone in which she said those two words spoke volumes about how upset she was with him. He gulped but tried not to let it bother him. Wordlessly, he gestured to McGonagall's retreating back. "Yes?" Hermione asked, as though she thought he was rather dull.

"For Christ's sake, 'Mione!" he exclaimed, trying and mostly succeeding in keeping his voice from carrying beyond the two of them. Truthfully, though, as long as it didn't make it as far as Minerva's ears, it really didn't matter how far his voice carried. "This is your last chance," he went on. "Go!" he added when she didn't move, giving her a solid push forward that forced her entirely from the couch. With a huff of irritation, she stood up, brushing herself off and scowling at him fiercely. If looks could kill…. But Ron, for once, was right. This was her last chance.

The portrait had opened and then closed behind her mentor, and casually Hermione hurried after her, hoping to catch the woman before she got too far ahead.

"Headmistress," she called, inwardly cursing her formality, the instant the portrait had firmly shut behind her. Formality and manners would do her no good, this time. Glancing down the corridor, Hermione couldn't help marveling at the speed with which the older woman had managed to make her way down the corridor. She hadn't thought she had been that far behind, but there was enough distance between them now to make her rethink her earlier supposition. Minerva stopped, turning at the sound of the familiar voice behind her, and waited for the younger woman to catch up.

"Miss Granger," Minerva replied, waiting until they were standing next to each other before asking what she could do for the now-graduated Gryffindor.

"I was hoping to have a word with you, Professor," Hermione replied, nerves making her voice a bit breathy. Hopefully Minerva thought it nothing more than the result of the brisk pace she had used to close the distance between them.

"Of course," Minerva responded easily. "What was it you wished to discuss?" she asked, gesturing that Hermione was to begin the intended conversation, rather than just provide the Headmistress with the topic. Hermione hesitated, fidgeting slightly. Normally she wouldn't have had a second thought about beginning the conversation, but this one, in particular, couldn't take place in the middle of a corridor.

"Actually, it's a personal matter," she hedged, unable to quite meet the other woman's eyes as she felt her face begin to heat. "And it's somewhat sensitive. Is it possible for us to go somewhere more private?" she asked, hoping that she wasn't presuming too much and that such a thing would, indeed, be possible. Minerva had never seemed to mind making time for the younger woman, but things had been much easier when Minerva had simply been the Transfiguration Professor and the Deputy Headmistress. Now, there was often things that she simply could not move aside for the Gryffindor, and it was highly likely that Minerva would have last minute work to do now that graduation had passed and term was only a few days from it's end.

Some amount of surprise at the request showed in the older woman's face, but Minerva nonetheless agreed easily enough. "I was just about to head to my quarters for a cup of tea," she announce. "Would you care to join me?" The offer was better suited to Hermione's needs than the younger woman had dared hope.

"That would be wonderful," Hermione said, knowing that any happier acceptance had to stay unvoiced. "You're sure that I'm not intruding, though?" Hermione asked cautiously. It was a question born not only out of concern that the Headmistress had work to do that night still, but also born out of the fact that Hermione had never been in Minerva's private quarters, despite the fact that the pair had frequently stayed up quite late talking over tea and biscuits.

"Nonsense," Minerva replied briskly, turning to walk away but hesitating the slightest bit to make sure that the younger woman was following. "It is, after all, a place that we can converse without worry and a place where I am always happy to receive my friends. And now that you are no longer my student, Miss Granger, I hope that I may take the liberty of calling you a friend." The woman's voice had an odd tone in it, but Hermione barely paid it any attention.

"Hermione," the younger woman corrected her gently, but firmly. "My friends call me Hermione." The professor shot her a smile that was gone as quickly as any of her rare smiles ever were.

"Then, Hermione," Minerva replied, testing the name out on her tongue, "I should inform you that my friends call me Minerva. Well," she amended, "some of them do." There were still plenty of her ex-students that she considered to be more acquaintances than friends whom she nonetheless called by their given names. They, of course, referred to her as they were accustomed to doing after seven years of Hogwarts. However, in those cases the usage of their given names had started without invitation, and had never been corrected; most were glad of the symbol that they were adults and familiar enough with the stern Transfiguration mistress that she used their given names and rarely wondered why, if at all, they had not been invited to do the same with hers. However, with Hermione, Minerva hadn't wanted to presume and she hadn't wanted it to be a one-sided thing. Minerva had spent the last seven years trying her hardest not to favor the young woman before her any more than she favored the rest of her students, because favoritism was something that McGonagall didn't do publicly. But now that they were no longer tied to the roles of student and teacher Minerva couldn't help but favor her, now, in every way possible, as if making up for lost time.

"Are you sure that this cannot wait until tomorrow, Hermione?" Minerva continued, gently. The quick jerk of the Gryffindor's head in her direction and the sudden falter of her footsteps told the Headmistress that she had phrased the sentiment poorly. "Your friends, after all, will no doubt be eagerly waiting for your return to the party that must now be in full swing in the Common Room. I'd be willing to wager that I've been gone for long enough that they've pulled out the firewhiskey they smuggled in from Hogsmeade by now." She could feel Hermione's astonishment, but she was too glad to see that she had managed to turn away potential disaster to care much that she was about to divulge a carefully kept secret. "Yes, Hermione, I know what goes on in the common rooms on graduation night, and ignoring it has become somewhat of a tradition. Far be it from me to stop tradition," she added dryly. "They will not be any the wiser, and they shall feel more daring to have smuggled party goods into the castle if they feel like they actually smuggled them in, rather than if they knew that the staff simply allowed it to happen. Poppy brews dozens of hangover potions in preparation for tomorrow, and gives them to every student who comes in looking for a simple anti-nausea potion. They will never notice that it works much better to cure them than it should, if it were truly an anti-nausea potion." Minerva allowed herself a small chuckle at the entire situation.

"The party will still be there when I get back," Hermione said dismissively, answering the original question, her eyes showing amusement at the professor's admission. She had never thought she would be hard pressed to make up her mind about which she wanted to do more: spent time with Minerva or attend the party. However, it wasn't at all a hard decision; the party would still be going when she returned, and Ron was right about this being her last chance to have this conversation with Minerva. That, and she knew that if she turned back now, she would never have the courage to try again.

"I would be surprised if it was not." Minerva acknowledged the younger woman's decision with a small nod of her head. As it was, they had traveled quickly and were close to the corridor which housed her new office and quarters; for Hermione to turn back now would be slightly foolish when they had come so far.

"You must have left the other Common Rooms long enough ago that their parties must be on the verge of debauchery already," Hermione commented lightly, trying to make conversation. She was surprised to see the other woman shake her head negatively. "No?"

"You misunderstand me, Hermione," Minerva said patiently. "I didn't visit the other houses." It was inevitable that the other woman would ask a follow-up question.

"Why not?"

"The Headmistress, Hermione, is supposed to embody all of the qualities that Hogwarts represents, so much so, in fact, that they are supposed to be difficult to place in a House themselves. Supposedly, this is supposed to decrease favoritism, but I cannot pretend that I am not genuinely fond of your class, nor must I try to keep up the pretense. It is hardly a secret that I was your Head of House, and that means that it is totally natural for me to favor those classes of Gryffindors that I knew first through the eyes of their Head of House. Now that I'm Headmistress, well, age old habits are hard to break," she added ruefully. "I couldn't walk into any other common room and attempt to create a heartfelt speech, and truly mean it; and I suspect that they will no miss my presence," she added with a slow, mischievous smile.

Hermione felt a similar smile spread across her face. "You'd better not let Fred or George hear you say that, or you'll have created a monster. They'll be telling the entire world that you were enormously fond of them the entire time and that the whole detention thing was a façade."

"I am enormously fond of them," Minerva said, surprising Hermione slightly. "But the detentions weren't a façade, and I will deny that I favored them with my last breath," she warned, eliciting a delighted laugh from Hermione with the declaration.

They had, by that point, reached the portrait that guarded Minerva's chambers.

"Domina," said a voice from what Hermione had thought was a seemingly empty landscape. It was then that she saw the speaker, one of the dozen or so men huddled around the embers of a campfire and a few tents in the bottom corner. They wore the distinctive armor and red cloaks of Roman legionaries, the man who had spoken wearing a different enough uniform that Hermione took him to be the leader of the troop. However, something about the title he had given Minerva caught her attention.

"I didn't know that Roman soldiers were allowed to lead troops if they were slaves, she said blandly. The title was one that literally meant mistress, and a free Roman wouldn't have used it.

"They didn't," Minerva answered her with the slightly frustrated tone of voice that said there was a story behind the title. "Talius simply calls me that because I left him alone with Albus for too long and Dumbledore thought it would be hilarious. The entire portrait, of course, was his idea of a play on the origins of my name, and Talius agreed when Albus suggested that every good Roman soldier must be a slave to the goddess of wisdom and war. When I became Headmistress, I found it totally impossible to keep him from addressing me like this." A small smile twisted her lips at the memory, though she was still attempting to pretend as if she found nothing about the situation funny at all.

Talius hadn't moved for the entire conversation, standing stiffly at attention, awaiting his orders. "Courage," Minerva told him, causing the picture to swing open as the soldier gave her a salute of acknowledgement. With a grin at the password and a shake of her head at the antics of the two venerable professors, Hermione allowed herself to be shepherded ahead of the Headmistress into the other woman's quarters.

Instantly, she was hit with a bout of nerves and instead of taking a seat opposite Minerva, who had flowed gracefully past her to settle comfortably on a green sofa, she chose instead to wander around the room, trying to recall her courage. Slowly, it returned to her, but she found herself still unable to sit down, and continued the pretense of examining the wall of bookshelves that Minerva had lining her sitting room. The witch in question was waiting patiently for Hermione to collect herself, not saying anything, but filling the silence with the motions of unpinning her hat and sending it across the room to settle gracefully to settle on the cloak stand with a practiced toss. The young Gryffindor turned at the movement, momentarily stunned to see a hat-less Minerva McGonagall sitting in front of her. The older woman had never been so casually comfortable with her, even after hours of chatting together, and Hermione couldn't recall a time when she had seen the professor actually remove her hat. Doing so meant that Hermione was treated to a view of the glossy ebony locks that Minerva kept pinned back into a severe bun. Her fingers itched to take those pins out.

"Why don't you ever wear your hair down?" Hermione asked absently, subconsciously taking a step forward so that she was standing directly behind Minerva.

"Habit, mostly," Minerva answered her, not turning around to face the woman behind her, even though she could feel Hermione's gaze on her. "I started wearing it years ago when I started teaching, and then it just became what I did with my hair," she explained softly, hands going to one of the long, elegant hairpins that held the bun in place. Hermione's hand on hers stopped her.

"May I?" she asked, voice cracking even on those few words. Hermione had no idea what she was doing, and a part of her was wondering if she had lost her sanity, but the other part of her was thinking that she was soon going to be unpinning Minerva McGonagall's legendary bun and that part of her was winning. The Headmistress's hand pulled away from the Gryffindor's, and Minerva gave the slightest nod. With the ease of someone who had her own experiences with the use of hairpins, Hermione's fingers deftly pulled them all free, shaking the long strands of her Professor's ebony hair free from the spiral that it had kept even after the pins had gone so that the strands were free to curl on their own. A cursory search with her hands to make sure that all of the pins had been removed had Minerva's eyes close at the pleasure of feeling someone else's fingers tangled in her hair.

"Hermione," Minerva managed to say, as one of Hermione's hands tossed the main bulk of her hair so that it was no longer splayed across the back of the couch, catching the woman's wrist before she could pull away fully. "You had wanted to talk to me about something?" she reminded her gently, not wanting to pry but also thinking it prudent that the recent graduate ceased her ministrations before something else happened. Hermione jerked her wrist away as if she had been burned, shocking Minerva with the suddenness of the action, but nonetheless Hermione came and seated herself, nervously, on the far end of the couch. Minerva's hairpins, which Hermione had palmed as she had removed them, were still clutched in her hand, though Minerva was fairly sure that Hermione had forgotten that she had even put them there in the first place. A tea service popped into existence on the coffee table in front of them. "Shall I mother?" Minerva asked rhetorically, taking in her companion's complexion, which had gone totally white. Soon enough, a warm cup of tea was being pushed into Hermione's hand, and Minerva was settling back into her seat.

The elder woman was blowing gently into her cup to cool the hot liquid slightly, and using the excuse to carefully study her former pupil over the rim. Her subtlety hardly seemed to be called for, considering that Hermione seemed to have sunk into some sort of shock coma since she had sat down, and had barely noticed the cup she was now holding. Though Minerva was forced to admit that perhaps she was noticing more than the Transfiguration Mistress had given her credit for as Hermione raised the cup towards her lips in a gesture not dissimilar to the one that Minerva herself had just used. However, before Minerva could even fully process that thought, Hermione had placed the cup straight to her lips, despite the heat of the beverage, and had taken a sip, her eyes bulging as the pain of scalding her tongue brought her back to the present. Now, it seemed as if her effort to swallow, and not spit, the hot beverage was taking up all of her attention, but her shock had caused her to nearly spill her tea in her lap. Wisely, Minerva decided to rescue the cup.

Leaning forward, she placed her own cup down on the table before swiftly sliding down to the other end of the couch, gentle fingers prying Hermione's hand from around the delicate porcelain and placing it next to hers on the table. The hand that hadn't been busy with the cup never left Hermione's. Hermione turned to face her with a weak smile.

"Wow, that was hot," she announced rather lamely, her cheeks heating with the slight blush that was now gracing her features. Rather than laughing, the other woman simply regarded her over the rims of her spectacles, and nodded gravely.

"Indeed, it was," Minerva acknowledged. Then, she paused, searching for a was to be as delicate as possible. "Hermione, is everything okay?" she queried hesitantly. "I cannot help but notice that you seem to have become amazingly nervous since crossing the threshold."

"I am rather nervous," Hermione replied bluntly, when she had forced herself to stop looking at Minerva like a deer in headlights. "You see," she began, somewhat hesitantly, her ability to look Minerva in the eye getting smaller as seconds ticked by, "I, uh," her voice cracked, and suddenly the hem of her skirt was absolutely fascinating, "I think that I am in love with you." The entire admission had been said very quietly, just loud enough for Minerva's sharp ears to catch it.

Suddenly, Minerva was very glad that she had put her teacup down on the table earlier, and that she hadn't attempted to pick it back up. She had a feeling that, if she had done so, it would have resulted in her spitting the beverage back in Hermione's face.

"Hermione," she managed, years of teaching assisting her in keeping her composure and not stuttering out her reply. "I must admit that I am flattered, beyond flattered, really, but," Minerva's throat tightened and she barely managed to force the next words from her lips, "I am many years your senior. Perhaps someone closer in age?" she suggested delicately, though the words sounded utterly wrong as they flew from her mouth. She was practically over the moon she was so 'beyond flattered', but that didn't change the fact that any sort of relationship between the two couldn't happen. Minerva had taught the young woman in front of her, for one, and then there was the age difference.

Hermione, though, seemed to have regained some of her courage, and wasn't giving up easily. "There is no one my age that even catches my eye in comparison to my feelings for you, Minerva," she asserted, though her confidence wasn't quite so repaired that she could look the Headmistress in the eye.

"You are my student, Hermione," Minerva cried, trembling as the realization struck her that Hermione had likely thought this entire thing through very carefully, and that, as such, she was likely about to be backed into a corner. And the worst part was that there was only a small part of her that didn't want to end up backed into that corner; only a small part of her brain was attempting to pretend as if she didn't want to tell the Gryffindor that she wanted this too.

"Was your student," Hermione corrected ruthlessly.

"Was my student, Hermione," Minerva said, acknowledging the correction. "Does it truly matter if you no longer are? That bond still exists between us, and has since you were eleven!"

"Minerva, I'm not sure if there is anyone left in Britain that you _haven't_ taught at one point or another," Hermione pointed out, not trying to reinforce the age gap between them, but rather point out how foolish it was to date only non-students. "You can't possibly allow that to define your dating pool," she added sensibly.

"And why not, Hermione?" Minerva asked, a touch waspishly.

"Because if you did, then how on earth are you supposed to be happy?" Hermione cried. There was a momentary silence at the words, in which both witches stared unyieldingly into each other's eyes, not noticing that their hands were still clasped between them on the couch. "I don't care about the age difference, Minerva, and I don't care that you were once my teacher. Goodness, I am glad that you were, because otherwise I doubt I would have gotten the chance to see what a caring, loyal, brave, intelligent, wonderful woman you are. Anyone would be lucky to have you," she admitted quietly. "And all I am asking is that I am lucky enough to be given a chance."

Minerva couldn't help but suck in a slight breath at that statement. Because truly, that was the sort of thing that made her heart absolutely melt, and any woman would have loved to hear that spouted at them by anyone they were even remotely interested in. And truly, she was more than remotely interested in Hermione Granger. Age difference and the fact that their relationship had once been teacher/pupil had been addressed, and Minerva honestly found that she couldn't come up with any other objections that she could voice. Had she really spent years trying to warn herself off of thinking of Miss Granger in a romantic light and only managed to come up with two objections that the younger woman had argued her way through as if they were flimsier than parchment?

"I cannot help but think that you are making a mistake, Hermione," she admitted eventually, looking down at the admission and realizing that their hands were entwined, and had been since she had rescued Hermione's cup of tea. "However, I also cannot help but hope, for my sake and for yours, that you are not," she added, managing to cut short the inevitable argument from the younger woman that this was not a mistake.

"Really?" Hermione asked breathlessly, hardly daring to believe her own years.

Minerva allowed a smile to grace her features, though this one stayed much longer than her smiles usually did. "Really," she said quietly, leaning forward and closing the short gap between them to capture the Gryffindor's lips with her own.

Hermione climbed back through the portrait hole much later, instantly blushing as she realized that a certain redhead, who was now standing with a broad smirk by the punch bowl, had not missed her entrance. Wordlessly, he took in her slightly mussed hair, swollen lips, and flushed face and his smirk widened even further.

"Time to celebrate, then?" he asked casually.

"Yes," she shyly admitted, causing him to laugh loudly and pour her a drink. By the lack of firewhiskey anywhere in sight, it appeared that it had all gone to good use in spiking the punch bowl in front of her.

"Then cheers, mate," he said, clinking glasses with her and downing his cup in one go. Hermione followed suit, though at a much more reasonable pace, her mind still on the woman she had just left.


	2. The Morning After

_**AN:**__ I honestly was not planning on continuing this story, since I felt like it could work as a stand along and truthfully I had no idea where to go next, but a few reviews got me thinking about where I would take this story if I were to continue it, and then I had enough of a picture in my head that it begged to be written. I still only have half of an idea on what this story is going to look like, or how long, but at the very least here is another snippet of this burgeoning relationship._

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><p>Hermione's eyes opened the next morning very slowly, her brain lethargically disbelieving the sheer effort that such a minuscule motion required, and instantly the light searing her retinas made her regret having expended the energy in the first place. However, a few slow blinks later and her eyes had adjusted somewhat, though the light was making her squint and her head throb, and she was forced to be somewhat glad of the light streaming in through the windows because it enabled her to see her surroundings. Surroundings that didn't really make much sense to her at the moment.<p>

Perhaps the thing that was so confusing to her was that she knew instantaneously that she was in her dorm room at the top of Gryffindor Tower. The room was too familiar to her to make her unable to identify it, but even if she hadn't known where she was the brilliantly scarlet hangings on the four-poster beds and the school trunks scattered around the room clearly marked her as being in the Gryffindor dormitories. That, and she highly doubted that the boy's dorms had so many random articles of clothing, stray heels, and abandoned copies of Witch Weekly scattered around their floor. No, it wasn't location that had confused her, but rather the angle from which she was viewing it, since she knew that this was not the view that she was accustomed to seeing from her bed. With a groan that echoed painfully in her own ears, she forced herself upright so that she could have a better look around.

The first thing that she noticed was that she was now facing the wall, and not the middle of the room as she could have expected, meaning that she had spent the entire night sleeping upside down. A furious blush started to make it's way across her cheeks as she turned herself around to survey the room. From her vantage point on Parvati's bed (for it _was_ Parvati's bed that she found herself lying on, and not her own) she was able to see the chaos that was the girl's dorms, though it was even more chaotic than usual, and looked almost as if a herd of hippogriffs had rampaged through it at some point last night. Across the room Parvati was sprawled ungracefully, shirtless, on Lavender's bed, snoring loudly while the girl to whom the bed actually belonged was face down on the floor in the center of the room. Hermione was briefly panicked at the sight, wondering if her roommate was alright, but it was with relief, and some amusement, that she noticed that Lavender was twitching in her sleep every so often. Now that she thought about it, the entire situation was pretty amusing, even if she had no idea how it had come to be.

What had happened last night? It felt as if her head was going to split open, her eyes had yet to adjust to the sunlight enough to allow her to stop squinting against the glare, and her mouth felt as if it had been stuffed with cotton not moments before, and that was only the mysterious part about how she felt, never mind the mystery of how she had ended up falling, upside down, into Parvati's bed last night. Last night—unbidden, a memory of Harry, a bra on his head and an arm slung in drunken camaraderie around Seamus' shoulders as they sang some sort of song that she was sure was terribly off-key, flashed through her mind. The memory made her groan as the feeling that she should be terribly embarrassed for her friends crept over her. She wasn't even going to begin wondering how Harry had ended up with a bra on his head, nor who it belonged to.

The movement that it took for her to stand and cross the room (moving carefully around Lavender) to her trunk left her feeling weak and shaky, and undeniably queasy. She was still in her uniform from the night before, but a glance in the mirror that hung on the back of the door showed her that it was rumpled from having been slept in and that she would have to change into a different set of clothes identical to the ones she was already wearing in order to be presentable for the train ride home. Bending over to pull a fresh set of robes from her trunk heralded the return of the queasiness, and Hermione reluctantly found herself re-ordering her morning to include a trip to the Hospital Wing. Perhaps an anti-nausea potion—another memory came to her mind unbidden, this time of sitting on an unfamiliar couch in an unfamiliar sitting room, with Minerva McGonagall's hairpins clenched tightly in one hand as the aforementioned woman kindly pushed a cup of tea into the other.

The first memory, the one of Harry, had brought more questions than it had answered, but the second one prompted the return of many other memories, so that by the time she had even thought about forming the questions in her mind she knew exactly how she had ended up in that meeting with the Headmistress and how it had come to an end. A self-satisfied smirk started to creep over her features to war with the faintest blush as she remembered the knowing look that Ron had given her when she had returned to the common room, slightly disheveled, quite some time after she had left it. She had been too happy to be able to stay embarrassed by his teasing though, and they had shared many a silent toast last night for her good fortune, as well as many for having graduated and many for no reason at all. With a sigh, she realized that the answers to her questions about the brief flash of memory with Harry and the mysterious bra, and the odd sleeping arrangement in the 7th year girl's dorms, weren't important (though she was still interested in them), since the answers would, no doubt, boil down to drunken debauchery at it's finest.

Another groan escaped her lips as she realized that she must be hungover. It wasn't something she had much experience with in other people, and she had no experience with it on herself, but given how last night had seemed to be going as far as her memories could follow it seemed likely that a hangover was the cause of the pounding headache and nausea that she was experiencing. Luckily, she had more than enough time to detour to the Hospital Wing on her way to breakfast, since she had done the large majority of her packing the night before. If she had to guess, Lavender and Pavarti weren't going to make it to breakfast at all; the pair always waited until the last minute to pack (as evidenced by their room's ability to look as if a cyclone had swept through it the night before) and relied heavily on their proficiency in packing charms in order to support this habit. However, she doubted that their proficiency was going to save them as much as they were accustomed to. She was so fascinated by the logistics of such an effort however, that she found herself getting ready nearly mechanically, and before she knew it she was fully dressed and ready to head down to breakfast and truly terrified to see what the Common Room looked like.

It was just as bad as she had feared, and so much worse. Horrified, Hermione stopped dead on the last step, looking out across what had become of the usually pristine common room. There were sleeping bodies curled up in every single one of the comfortable armchairs that dotted the room, and even more slumbering students passed out on the floor or on the tops of tables. A Gryffindor tie hung from one of the wall sconces holding a magical torch in place across the room from her, and discarded shirts and jumpers were in piles on the floor, mostly out of the general walking routes. The bra that Harry had been wearing on his head was lying half in, half out, of the punch bowl, which sat miraculously in the same place that it had been last night, with a small amount of punch still swimming in the bottom. Discarded cups littered the floor, making it nearly impossible to even see the floor under the clothes, Gryffindors, and plastic cups. Instincts gained from all of the troublemaking with Ron and Harry told her that it would not do for her to be caught in the common room at all, and that it was better for her to be very, very far away from the entire scene when/if a professor were to discover it. If a professor hadn't already discovered it.

Gingerly, she stepped through the mess towards the door, attempting to avoid the sleeping forms of her fellow Gryffindors as well as the plastic cups that she knew would crunch loudly if stepped on, wondering the entire time how it was possible that the three seventh year girls had even made it up to their dorms the night before. It was clear from the sheer number of people still in the common room that they were the exception, not the rule, and she considered it miraculous that they had made it upstairs and into bed, never mind that only two of them actually made it to a bed before passing out. As she passed the punch bowl the smell of alcohol reached her nose, bringing with it a wave of queasiness, and it was all she could do to get out of the room as quickly as possible before she puked. Amazingly, the instant the portrait hole closed shut behind her the feeling subsided, and she ignored the Fat Lady's polite greeting in favor of taking a deep breath of fresh air before resuming her efforts to be as far away from the common room as possible before a professor showed up.

She hadn't made it all that far when she ran headlong into someone rounding a corner on her way to the hospital wing, the impact sending a sharp stab of pain through her head as she fought to keep her balance with a coordination that she didn't happen to possess that morning. Luckily, she didn't need it; firm, but gentle, hands quickly shot out to steady her so that she didn't fall, but the pain in her head had scattered her wits and disoriented her

"Hermione," a Scottish-accented voice said from right in front of her, allowing Hermione to know exactly who she had just run into.

"Headmistress," she breathed, the pain in her head and faint feelings of nausea causing her to act out of habit alone, and she had spent many years having it drilled into her head that you called your professors by their titles, never mind that the night before she and Minerva had far surpassed the average teacher-student relationship. Dimly, as she tried to re-orient herself, she realized that she and Minerva were only a few inches apart, and that one of the older woman's hands was on her hip. The Headmistress seemed to realize it as well, because she suddenly took a step back, her absence so sudden that Hermione felt a palpable ache at the sudden loss.

"Hermione, I do believe we had this conversation last night," Minerva said kindly, green eyes peering into hers with some concern.

"My apologies, Minerva," she responded, an involuntary smile crossing her lips as she savored the sound of the professor's name on her tongue. "Force of habit," she explained with a somewhat tighter smile, knowing that it wasn't entirely habit that had caused the slip-up, but also the hangover she was experiencing.

"And I'm sure that our collision was somewhat startling as well," Minerva predicted, a hint of concern still on her face. "Hermione, are you feeling well this morning? You look rather pale," she added, pure worry lacing the Scottish brogue.

"I am feeling a little under the weather this morning," Hermione allowed after a brief hesitation. She knew from their conversation last night that Minerva knew exactly what had gone on in the common room last night, and that the other woman was smart enough to see right through her carefully worded admission, but there was still some part of her that didn't want to be caught by the woman she was dating, if not by her Headmistress, while hungover. "If you hadn't steadied me I probably would have fallen right over," she continued. "Thank you."

Minerva's eyes never left her face, and with a sinking feeling Hermione knew that the jog was up, already. "It was my pleasure," the older woman said, instead of whatever chastisement Hermione had been expecting. "I find that the cat in me makes it rather difficult to knock me off my feet, and I often find myself recovering from a bump faster than the other person," she explained airly. "And it's amazing how much being nauseous can interfere with one's balance at the worst of times," she continued, somewhat pointedly, though her tone was still gentle. Hermione could just nod dumbly.

"I had suspected that I would find you 'a little under the weather' this morning," the older woman stated, reaching out for the younger woman's arm so that she could propel her gently down the hallway in the direction of the hospital wing. Hermione was too grateful to find that she hadn't been teased yet to resist, and at any rate it was where she had been going. "It's rather convenient that I ran into you, actually, since I was just heading to the Gryffindor common room to make sure that you were awake," Minerva confided. She couldn't miss the small shudder that ran through the younger woman at that statement.

"As sweet as that is," Hermione said with a soft smile in the other woman's direction, "I am glad that I managed to meet you before you made it all the way there." She didn't want to elaborate any farther, unsure what exactly she could say out in the open and what she couldn't. In Hogwarts, the walls had not only ears, but eyes and voices too.

Minerva's expression became pained. "That bad?" she queried. "Do I want to know?"

"Let's just say that if you had taken even a single glance through the portrait hole that you would have been forced to take points, or award detentions, or something," Hermione generalized. "I could barely believe my eyes when I walked down there this morning. How could one party cause so much damage?" she wondered idly, now wishing to some extent that her memories were more clear in regards to the finer details of last night.

"It is amazing isn't it?" Minerva commented as they rounded the corner and strode through the doors to the hospital wing. Considering the hour, Minerva had hoped that it would have been fairly empty and quiet, since most of the people who would be needing Poppy's help were still asleep, but it seemed as if there had been something pretty interesting that had happened at the Ravenclaw party last night, because half of the seventh years were in the room, clustered around a couple beds. Through the throng, Minerva thought that she could see Lisa Turpin, though she wasn't entirely sure if that _was_ actually who she was seeing since the poor girl's head was roughly three times it's normal size, violently purple, and the rest of her body was covered in feathers.

"Merlin," Hermione breathed out at her side, as they both came to a shocked halt just inside the doors that were now swinging shut behind them. Poppy chose that moment to come bustling out of her office, levitating several beakers and looking very harried.

"Headmistress," she said curtly, the word falling from her mouth with a sharpness caused by obvious stress. "What's wrong with her?" she added as she caught sight of Hermione. Hermione opened her mouth to snap a reply at the mediwitch, since the question seemed rather rude to her, but Minerva's hand fell on her shoulder and instead she just closed her mouth, face still showing signs of her annoyance.

"Nothing that I can't handle myself, Poppy," Minerva said calmly. "We'll do our best to stay our of your way," she added, causing Pomfrey to give the pair one last look before turning to shoo the Ravenclaws out of her way with brisk efficiency. Once Poppy was otherwise occupied, Minerva turned to Hermione, giving her a slight push towards the end of the ward. "I see that the far bed is empty. Why don't you go and sit down and I will be back momentarily with a potion," she suggested. Hermione didn't protest and the two women went their separate ways, Minerva heading into Poppy's office to rummage for the hangover cure.

"Drink up," Minerva said when she had returned with the potion in hand, a flick of her wand causing the curtains to close around the pair of them as she leaned against the bed, her hip mere inches away from the younger woman's thigh. Hermione took it without commenting on the suddenly closed curtains, her free hand waving her wand in a motion that the Headmistress was able to recognize as a silencing charm.

"This isn't an anti-nausea potion," Hermione said quietly, turning her head to find that Minerva's proximity was even closer than she had originally realized and their lips were only a short distance apart. Unable to help herself, she closed the scant distance between them to capture the older witch's lips with her own. Minerva's lips pressed back into hers hungrily, the transfiguration mistress's hands entangling themselves in the bushy brown hair at the nape of Hermione's neck while the younger woman's hands instantly dropped both wand and potion on the bed before moving to encircle the other woman's waist. There was a moment of barely perceptible hesitation and then Minerva was deepening the kiss, her tongue gently begging Hermione for entrance, which was granted almost instantly.

When they finally broke apart, it was due to a lack of air. They were still close together, close enough for Minerva to tilt her face upwards the slightest bit and place a kiss on the tip of Hermione's nose. The small gesture caused Hermione's eyes to sparkle with amusement as the older woman gently, and slowly, untangled her hands from Hermione's hair.

"You don't have a touch of stomach flu," she pointed out, her voice sounding rather breathless and slightly husky as well, in response to the earlier question that the younger woman had already nearly forgotten. The momentary confusion allowed Minerva to pull away so that they were no longer quite so close together.

"No, I suppose I don't, do I?" Hermione said rhetorically. "Though this is the first time that I've ever heard of an illness having such wonderful consequences," she added, a sly smile quirking her lips. "Was this what you had in mind this morning when you decided to go in search of me, Professor McGonagall?" she added teasingly, watching the other woman flush slightly. So it _had_ been what Minerva was thinking.

"Cheeky witch," the older woman grumbled. "And just what, pray tell, were your plans for the morning?" she asked, as if hoping that something would appear that she could tease the Gryffindor about in turn.

"In comparison, I'm afraid my plans were rather boring. I had only planned on coming here, for a potion, before heading off to breakfast in hopes of allowing my dorm mates enough time to sort themselves out before grabbing my things," she said, grinning as she remembered her confusion upon waking up.

"And how are Miss Brown and Miss Patil this morning?" Minerva wanted to know as she reached over Hermione to grab the potion, which Hermione had yet to make a move for, and uncorked it for the younger woman. Hermione made a face as it was handed to her once more, but she took it without complaint and without making too horrible of a face as it went down.

"Still asleep, no doubt, but I suspect that they will be rather confused once they wake up," Hermione said, placing the empty vial on the small table next to the bed and then drawing Minerva closer to her. "I woke up, upside down, on Parvati's bed," she began, once she caught the questioning look on the Headmistress' face, "and Parvati fell asleep, shirtless, on Lavender's bed, while poor Lav passed out face-down in the middle of the floor. It was quite perplexing to wake up that way, let me tell you," she concluded with a small chuckle.

"I can imagine," Minerva said, memories of her own drunken escapades running through her head. The morning after being blacked out was always the worst, and being Scottish she'd had her fair share of those mornings. "Have breakfast with me?" she asked moments later, as she found herself fighting the urge to lean into the other woman and bury her face in her shoulder. Hermione stiffened suddenly.

"In the Great Hall?" she asked timidly, the uncertainty lining her voice familiar to Minerva's ears after seven years of knowing the other woman.

"In my quarters," Minerva soothed, knowing that neither of them were ready to be entirely public with their relationship, whatever it was exactly, and that neither of them needed to cause a stir in front of (a heavily thinned out) portion of the entire school. "Just the two of us," she added with a smile. "Poppy will be looking for us soon, it will be summer in a few hours, and I'm not willing to let you go just yet," she admitted softly.

Swallowing around the sudden lump in her throat that appeared as she realized that she had no idea how things were going to work out now that she and Minerva were together, Hermione couldn't help but be touched by the words. A gentle fingertip under the other woman's jaw lifted Minerva's lips to hers for a soft, chaste kiss. "Breakfast sounds lovely," she said, allowing the older woman to help her off the bed and dispelling the charms that hid the truth, for now, from the rest of the world.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: <strong>_After having written that piece, I think it's obvious that this story has the ability to continue. I am going to leave it marked as complete, since I am not entirely sure that I will be continuing onto a third chapter, or if I will just leave it to end here and put the rest to your imaginations. I think Hermione, and myself, are beginning to realize that her plan wasn't very well thought out in terms of working it into the plans that must already be in place for her future. Plus, I rather like the idea of having a story that I can update at will, but also consider to be a completed work. So, I am not planning a swift update, if I do at all, but here is another snippet nonetheless. Hope you enjoyed it :)_


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